Taking his regular postprandial stroll in the castle's rear gardens, a habit he'd begun several years ago for the needful exercise after spending the whole day at his bloody desk running the New Council, Rupert Giles saw ahead of himself a small group of several Slayers purposefully stride down the path together and then turn into one of the more isolated nooks of their Scottish headquarters grounds.

Giles' curiosity was further heightened by seeing a couple more Slayers do the same from a side path, also joining their warrior sisters now out of sight behind the concealing shrubbery. Deciding on a sudden whim to see what they were up to, the New Council's Director made his way there. Right before the break in the hedge, this mature man heard a very familiar voice call his name from behind.

"Hello, Giles! Are you here for the ceremony, too?"

Turning with a somewhat puzzled smile on his face, Giles told his daughter-in-heart, "What ceremony, Buffy?"

"Oh," the longest-lived Slayer (only on points, Faith always maintained) blinked. She went on in the same uncertain tone, "So, nobody told you?"

"Told me what?"

After asking that, Giles bemusedly regarded how Buffy then dug into her pants pocket to pull out a newspaper clipping from there. He took this proffered item from her and unfolded it while holding next this up to the fading twilight in the last daytime hours of the long summer evening.

While reading it, Giles' eyebrows soon rose in evident surprise. Bringing down the clipping to observe Buffy waiting for him to speak, her Watcher couldn't help observing, "Is that why you're here? To mark her passing?"

"Yep," Buffy nodded as it should've been totally obvious. She sent Giles a rather melancholy expression which yet had a modicum of pride within this look, "How could we not? That lady, she would've made a fine Slayer, right?"

"True," Giles admitted. He waved at the hedge and the copse beyond where the rest of the other Slayers already gathered there were definitely listening in on their conversation, "I'll just leave you to it, shall I—"

Buffy clearly wasn't having any of that. "No, no, do it with us! She's one of yours, after all!"

Pausing to work out in his mind what Buffy was trying to say, Giles had to further agree. "Well, yes, if you put it that way. From Oxfordshire, and all that."

"Good!"

With that beaming exclamation, Buffy stepped forward and slipped her right arm around Giles' left elbow, escorting him into the grove.

A few minutes later, Giles was holding in his hands the now-lit paper lantern just like all the other ones the remainder of the group had in their possession of the circle of nearly a dozen Slayers and one man who were facing inwards of this ring of New Council personnel heroically dedicated to fighting against the forces of evil. Just as one other person had also done so almost seventy years ago.

Feeling the buoyant, glowing paper lantern lifting against his gripping fingers by the hot air produced via an ignited waxy flammable cube placed inside, Giles didn't let go. It wasn't time yet, as shown by Buffy in her position in the circle now speaking as if performing a quotation:

"I AM the pilot!"

Smiling at her sister Slayers and Giles listening in fascination, Buffy continued, "She snarked that right at the guys who just saw her get out of that big, old airplane she'd just landed in front of them but couldn't believe some little helpless woman was good enough for that job! Nope, they insisted on looking inside, only to wind up with way lots of egg on their faces when they figured out she was telling the truth!"

Low delighted laughter came from the Slayers over hearing that, and even Giles chuckled along with them.

Smirking at them all, Buffy continued, "For the next couple of years during World War II, she was one of the best fliers in the RAF's Air Transport Auxiliary, ferrying in total at least a thousand planes of all kinds — bombers, fighters, and more — from factories to airfields and anywhere else she was ordered. She knew every trip could end with her getting killed in various ways, just like some of the other woman fliers were, but she did her duty, and did it well."

Buffy now held up her own lantern over her head. This action was imitated by the others there as they waited for what was to come.

Buffy next let go of the lantern which slowly ascended into the near-darkness above, followed by the rest of the lanterns in a circle of radiant lights. Tilting her head back to stare at the small hot air paper balloons better known as sky lanterns, Buffy declared, "From every one of us, all honor to you, Mary Ellis!"

Taking quiet pleasure in how well his people were showing their respects, Giles watched with the rest how the sky lanterns were rising higher and higher as if to the very apex of heaven. He then heard one of the Slayers there start to sing under her breath.

It was naturally one of the other English natives there, who began the familiar tune to any inhabitant of that green and pleasant land. Giles promptly joined in, copied soon enough by the remainder of their group as they learned the simple melody and down-to-earth chorus.

"Bless 'em all,

Bless 'em all,

The long and the short and the tall.

Bless all those Sergeants and WO ones,

Bless all those Corporals and their bleedin' sons,

Cos' we're saying goodbye to 'em all.

And back to their billets they crawl,

You'll get no promotion this side of the ocean,

So, cheer up my lads, bless 'em all."

Author's Note: Mary Ellis (February 2, 1917 – July 24, 2018) was indeed a real person and did exactly what Buffy Summers mentioned, and far more. Though, what really deserves for her to become part of the Buffyverse is the decidedly eerie fact that her maiden name was…Wilkins.

I can't help visualizing a certain Sunnydale mayor during the war years happily reading about the courageous overseas relative gallantly serving her country.